Mr Abraham Adams was an excellent scholar. He was a perfect master of
the Greek and Latin languages; to which he added a great share of
knowledge in the Oriental tongues; and could read and translate French,
Italian, and Spanish. He had applied many years to the most severe
study, and had treasured up a fund of learning rarely to be met with in
a university. He was, besides, a man of good sense, good parts, and good
nature; but was at the same time as entirely ignorant of the ways of
this world as an infant just entered into it could possibly be. As he
had never any intention to deceive, so he never suspected such a design
in others. He was generous, friendly, and brave to an excess; but
simplicity was his characteristick: he did, no more than Mr Colley
Cibber, apprehend any such passions as malice and envy to exist in
mankind; which was indeed less remarkable in a country parson than in a
gentleman who hath passed his life behind the scenes,--a place which
hath been seldom thought the school of innocence, and where a very
little observation would have convinced the great apologist that those
passions have a real existence in the human mind.

His virtue, and his other qualifications, as they rendered him equal to
his office, so they made him an agreeable and valuable companion, and
had so much endeared and well recommended him to a bishop, that at the
age of fifty he was provided with a handsome income of twenty-three
pounds a year; which, however, he could not make any great figure with,
because he lived in a dear country, and was a little encumbered with a
wife and six children.

It was this gentleman, who having, as I have said, observed the singular
devotion of young Andrews, had found means to question him concerning
several particulars; as, how many books there were in the New Testament?